Delphi cut the corners with their fixed positioning. It will not work for web and it works very poorly for localization (labels change their lengths and can overlap over each other).

As soon as you introduce layouts to your UI, all the Delphi simplicity goes out of the window.

This is an interesting challenge to invent a way for UI to be pixel-fixed, yet work in web and with localization. If someone would do that, you could rebuild Delphi for web.

I guess one way is to build a pixel-fixed form for English language and let AI to build a layout for this form.

We had things like expandable container groups for UI controls that could auto-resize the child controls as necessary to fit their content back in the 90s.

Granted, it wasn't as easy to set up properly vs modern web layout engines - but there is so much more to RAD applications than the UI layout by itself.

So? Many apps don’t need localisation. Responsive UIs weren’t all that important in the mid 1990s when monitors and their resolutions were all in a relatively small corridor. I remember 20 inch CRTs to be the absolute high-end that few could afford. Most PCs came with 14 or 15 inch monitors, 17 inch later.

Totally agreed. I have done both a lot of work with the Borland tools and over the years with various web based libraries and languages, Borland wins hands down, in spite of the underlying horrible mess.